Category Archives: On the Fence

To splurge or to save? My reviews and thoughts on beauty and body products (and possible dupes).
If you’re on the fence about buying something, read through the review that corresponds to the product you are interested in. It may help you decide.

PrefaceI’m being an ass again, reviewing something that is sold out… but should you find it second hand at a non-jacked price, you really should seriously consider getting it. This review here is to provide insight that’ll hopefully guide your decision making process.

This is the Ohm Beads Bead of the Month for August of 2017 in commemoration of the solar eclipse that will be taking place on the 21st which is, conicidentally, the day I start the fall semester of my M.S. program, and the day my life as I know it will cease to exist. (Similar to how if the sun was devoured and the Earth cast into darkness, life would cease to exist.) Kidding. It’s not that bad because we’re only going to be in three days of classes (rather than five) with one day of fieldwork. But we have been warned that fieldwork will be quite… intense.

Anyways, where was I? Oh right. Eclipse. I don’t care about that. I mean, I do REALLY want to view the total eclipse if I can swing it (ditch class maybe?) but my train of thought in getting it went more like, “I see pretty dragon. I want pretty dragon. ” Plus, it’s shiny. *cue Moana song*

The BeadIt’s obviously East Asian inspired in design with the boxy head with “antlers”, fathered tail, and lack of wings . Just about every other dragon design I’ve seen has been goofy looking, or the dragon has been given a bird-like head. No, just… no. This little guy was handsome and beautifully detailed so I “had” to have it.

I’d call this a charm rather than a bead. Being made of solid sterling silver, it’s pretty weighty despite the delicate, sinewy appearance. It’s a good size that will get noticed, but it is still small enough that it doesn’t take over a bracelet. it doesn’t HAVE be the focal point of a composition (as i will demo on a few bracelets later in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

Like with all restaurant and eating extrablishment posts, I’ll be updating this periodically as things change and as I try new flavors to give my thoughts on them.

The Store

The first thing I noticed is that their ice cream is very…. vividly coloed. Florid almost. They don’t even attempt to hide the fact that colorant is poured in with a liberal hand.

There are two display cases but only one is in operation. The staff behind the counter wait on each group one by one because of the way the queue works. even if you go in knowing what you want, you still have to wait in a line behind the unbearable people who DON’T know what they want and are asking for samples of aaaallll the interesting things. *waves sheeishly* It takes a very, very long time basically.

The three people behind the counter could only handle so much. My peeve is that the other half of the store ()along with the other ice cream case was not being used except as standing space for people who had already gotten their treats.

I like to consider myself a patient person, but the inefficiency here was ridiculous. they should have had one case open for taking orders and the other open for sampling and backup service. It’s also all sound reflective surfaces in there so it gets unbearably loud very quickly. That probably contributed a bunch to my crankinesss.

Also of note: either the owner of the place is young or the management in general is very young, or the owners have kids that have some role in the store. There were several small flocks of 2-3 people my age going in between the front and back of the store. (Behind and in front of service counter)

The Edibles

The Milky Bun – basically just a glazed doughnut without a hole. I got a milky bun with two flavors, AKA “split” which was an extra 50 cents (so 0.50 on top of $6.00). Skip it and go for the two scoop option ($6.00) in a cone (0.50) which ends up costing the same. Maybe I’m not a fan of it because I’m just not a doughnut person in general. I’ll eat them and I enjoy them, but I won’t go out for my way to obtain one, and I certain atelier don’t crave them. To their credit it is served warm and the toasty temperature of the nread serves as a nice foil to the cool ice cream.

Cookie Monster: This is a pretty solid choice if you’ve got a serious sweet tooth. A little on the too sweet, and thus cloying side but the ice cream is loaded with sizable, satisfying chunks of cookie pieces that are fun to munch on.

Mint Monster: good but nothing special . maybe the too bright green color was putting me off along with the fact that it was too saccharine

Vietnamese Coffee -holy shit did they nail this flavor right on the head. it even has that slightest lick of bitterness in the finish like the espresso used as the coffee base and there’s the rich taste of condensed milk in there. if you like coffee, if you like Vietnamese coffee, you gotta try this.

Jasmine Tea – Another pretty good flavor. tastes like the base flavoring agent was actually brewed from tea. There’s a whisper of grassy tea dust and a whopping amount of Jasmine, but it’s not so strong that it’s bitter or whomps your taste buds into submission and clogs up your nose like some places over dose on the Jasmine component of the flavoring.

Thai Tea – Good. But the Thai tea flavor is pretty standard. Creamistry does it good too, and I like their texture better.

In general, the center cream here has a very slick but thick mouthfeel like they’re relying on emulsifiers quite heavy for the creamy texture). It’s not rock hard hard but not whipped and soft either thank good ness. Sadly, it does not have that slightly chewy texture I like.

Verdict

This place is pretty expensive for what it is with no novelty factor to at least make up for the cost and long wait.

There’s another place in the same plaza across from the Kicking Crab that has an amazing Earl Grey Ice Cream. I think I’ll be continuing to go there for my after dinner sugar fix instead. Less of a wait and less gimmicky. I might pop in once in a while for that Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream if I don’t see much of a wait, though.

I raved about the Tarte Airbuki a while ago. I called it my favorite foundation brush. And it was for the longest time! As often is the case, only time will tell how well a brush is made and how durable it is.

The problem is… it just hasn’t held up well.

Here is what the brush head originally looked like:

Quite a far cry isn’t it?

I noticed that this unevenness/deterioration started happening in August or September of 2016. Granted I wash my foundation brushes very, very often, but that is some weak shit glue in the handle if it wasn’t able to hold down the bristles well enough to survive even three years of terror. Luckily just two months earlier, I had discovered the Tarte Airbrush Foundation Brush and I loooove the hell out of that one even more. Why? it’s bigger and thus, faster to cover my whole face, but doesn’t sacrifice much coverage intensity even though it is no where near as dense. That has been my (almost daily) foundation brush since.

RIP Little Dude: November 2014 – May 2017

It’s time to retire you, my dear Airbuki. You served me so very well. I just wish your lifespan could have been longer.

I can’t bear to throw Airbuki away so I’m going to tuck it away in a brush case to admire once in a while, and remind me of all the wonderful rushed mornings we had getting my face ready.

I’ll be doing this overview a little differently. In the first section I will be giving just pure straight facts about the brushes with only minimal “feelings” and input on anything that is subjective. In the second part, the brushes will be out of order because they will be ranked from my most to least favoured. That is where you’ll get my opinions on them. So if it all sounds uninformative and bland as a wet tissue at first, keep pushing on.

All of the pictures are in slideshow format! so be sure to “scroll” through them to get the full picture (heh) of what each brush is like. Incase you are wondering what my lovely sparkly black background is /s… it’s aquarium filter foam.

Once there was an Ask Reddit Thread topic-ed, “If you could add a 0 to any number in your life, what would it be?” there was one answer that struck me as pure and utter genius: “the number of hours before I need to sleep.” In a perfect world I would be able to use all that extra awake time to take care of things that need to be done (like all the drafts for this blog). In said world, I would also have individual review + comparison posts for each brush completed and hotlinked (the comprehensive, singular focus ones that I normally do) but alas all I have are skeletons of each post. If there is one you want to see in particular, let me know! Having a request or two is usually enough to push me to move them from the back burner to the forefront.Otherwise, the next one up will be a comparison between the Surrat Artisque Face Brush and Chikuhodo Z-1 Powder Brush. If there are any of you who think that this should not occur, speak now or forever hold you peace.

For brush veterans who know what you are getting into, feel free to skip the following section to get straight to the mini reviews.

This post is going to be a fairly quick one as I am writing it between classes instead of doing my writing assignments. ~wheeeeee~ that is the sound of irresponsibility. I already took the time to do calculations on the prices of Yojiya brushes vs similar if not identical models made and sold by Hakuhodo. I’m sharing my calculations and “research” here because I’m a nice person ;D

For the brushes that I am comparing, the specs that they give (hair length and hair type are identical). I think its fairly obvious who the OEM for Yojiya is, hm? Also, these are only the ones i am interested in. I’m obviously not comparing all of them

Let’s start with the ones I am nearly bouncing out of my chair with excitement for: The Traditional Lip Brushes. It’s well established by now that if anyone mentions “kolinsky” I’m all ears, tugging at the leash, and salivating uncontrollably.

Hakuhodo Left, Yojiya Right – Both heads are 15 mm long

This Medium Traditional/Pro Lip brush is a good deal though (even before throwing in CDJapan’s free shipping and no tax for international orders)

At this low of a percentage, I kinda don’t care anymore. convenience is king, plus i can think of it as only 3.7% markup because on CDJapan purchases, 3% of the purchase price is given back as points

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m also eyeing the Kokutan Eye Shadow brush with Canadian squirrel because I’m already too deep down the rabbit hole to stop. I’m doing comparisons in USD becuase this brush and the following can be found on Hakuhodo USA

H. USA is 34.2% more than H. JP’s price with today’s exchange rates, before shipping and personal shopper’s fee (which will vary but is usually above 10%).

Yikes… maybe I won’t get this one. I’m not digging that double digit mark up… between Cdjapan and Hakuhodo Japan, but compared to Hakuhodo USA (before shipping), the price is pretty nice. Plus, the 3% back of Cdjapan will technically drop the CDJ price down to 9% more than Hakuhodo JP’s price.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am also eyeing a most likely exact Yojiya dupe for a brush I already have (the Hakuhodo Kokutan Large Eye Shadow Brush). If they are the same, great! That will mean I’ll have a backup for a brush that I love and near abuse with frequency of use. I’m also curious to see if the quality of hair Yojiya Brushes use is as good as, better, or worse compared to Hakuhodo. Think of it as setting a baseline.

H. USA is 34% more than H. JP with today’s exchange rates before shipping and personal shopper’s fee (which will vary).

Ouch. I can’t even reasonably justify this one. Maybe when the exchange rate improves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me tell you what is a good deal though, the Yachiyo’s and equivalent of the Hakuhodo’s Itabake’s which Yojiya calls “Kokyuban-Hake.” I’m not all that interested in the itabakes, but for the lazy readers who are interested, here are all the sizes of the Yojiya -Hake’s . Just compare the prices side-by-side in seperate windows with the Itabake’s from the Hakuhodo JP site. Don’t even bother checking Hakuhodo USA. They will be higher priced. The Yojiya ones are very well priced. Shockingly so at nearly 50% less! Maybe this is because contouring (what most people use the itabake’s for as a stand in for the infamous NARS contour brush) is not a trendy thing in Japan so they don’t price gouge off public interest.

But hallelujah! CDJapan’s price is 40.74% less than Hakuhodo JP’s!!! The only different I can see is the different color of the handle string loop. Again I’m not going to bother wasting my time comparing to Hakuhodo USA prices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is one unique item that I am ready interested in as of right now. It’s this wooden Brush Case (Fude-oki)which swivels!I’ll take two of the Yojiya’s.! FML nvm. They updated the pictures because i think too many people were going over to the website and being excited only to receive the actual thing and be disappointing. This is the old picture that got me excited and was taken off the website:

AAAAAANNNND, here are the updated pics that better represent the product…. it’s just one, segmented box.

Maybe they’re stack-able? (referencing the one that got me so hyped). Welp, now i have a potential wood-working project to waste my time on!

Nevertheless, I think is a pretty reasonable price at 1,908 yen or approximately $17. Yes, it is simple, but the materials + time:labor costs if I were to make this myself would far outstrip the cost of this. Plus, consider that a plain lift-top box like this velvet-lined box by Koyomo here is selling for 3,000 yen.

Why am i not buying them right away even though I’m so excited? Why is this a potential haul instead of a haul I’m waiting on to arrive? Well, I’ve been a very bad girl this month. I’ve already bought invested too much in gear for my upcoming ski weekend @ Tahoe. Financial responsibility above all else, children. (Which is funny because I’m probably a fetus compared to most of the people reading)

First off, i know. I’m terrible when it comes to typos and there’s a glaring one in the title: Azure is suppose to have an “e”. it’s not my bad this time though. That’s literally how they (Chikuhodo) spell it. Never mind. I’ve been schooled. Azur is the French spelling for azure and all past Chikuhodo holiday sets have been named in French, so it makes sense to continue the trend. Violet, being the same threw me for a good loop though.

NOTE: I will add the price comparison for Beautylish once i see their list price for the sets.

Let’s start with the bigger (and more expensive) set.

Azur SetThis set is available for pre-order now at CDJapan for 32,500 yen. The set contains 6 brushes and a pouch, all in a dark, shimmery cool-blue theme. There are 200 sets available. The product page says that they wont be shipped out until late November though but be prepared to buckle down for long wait.

From the pictures and comparing provided measurements, it looks like this set contains the following series of brushes

Powder Brush: Gray Squirrel

Hair length approx. 52 mm, 27 mm wide (tentative, see the long quote in the Violet Set section to see how the number was arrived at.)

Looks like a MK-2 (16,000 yen) or perhaps a Z-9 (16,000 yen). Both are 52 mm long and 25 mm wide with the former being 22 mm thick and the latter being 20 mm thick. Without a thickness measurement for the Azur powder brush, i have no way of telling which one it is. Either way, both brushes have the same price and match in hair length + hair type.

This one was hard. The closest i got was finding the Y-3 (2,500 yen) and the Artist RE/BL-12-2 Eye Shadow L (2,500 yen). Both are made of pine squirrel mixed with weasel and 20 mm, so 2 mm longer. The Y-3 looks fuller and starts tapering earlier like the Azur L e/s brush. This Azur L e/s brush may actually be a twin of an eye brush that is not from Chikuhodo though.

Eye shadow M Brush: Canadian Squirrel

Hair length approx. 10 mm

Closest match is the Artist BL/RE-6-6 Eye Shadow M (2,500 yen) that is also made with Cn. Squirrel, but 2mm longer than the brush in this set. However, this brush is discontinued (dc’d) and no longer available like their other pure Cn. sq eye brushes from the Artist line, the whole of which was dc’d recently.

Eyebrow Brush: Water Badger

Hair length approx. 9-11 mm

Similar to the Artist RE/BL-6-4 (2,700 yen) but appears less wide, though not less slanted (the RE/BL-6-4 is 7-11 mm long). Being in the Artist series, this is now dc’d, and quickly running out of stock.

The values of the individual brushes in this set total up to 31,200 yen while the set costs 32,500 yen. No savings at all, in fact you are paying 4% more than if you brought all of them alone, except you can’t buy some of them because they are of the dc’d Artist line. And yes i double checked my calculations because i was taken aback.

Some would argue that this isn’t fair because I didn’t include the cost of the case, but I didn’t do that last year either. And yes, the price for the Lumiere set was still a 7% savings compared to getting the equivalent brushes individually.

**Edit Oct 28, 2016: important update via a comment i received:

I’ve seen brown squirrel used for the KW-2 powder brush from their discontinued Kiwami Brush Set. A closer match might be the Eyeshadow Brush B by Addiction (a rumored Chikuhodo OEM), which also has the same combination of brown squirrel and weasel.

This would be pretty good news. The retail price of the Addiction B eye shadow brush (20 mm long, 2 mm longer) is 4,900 yen, which would push the value of this set into positive territory.

If the Addiction by Ayako brush is the closest match, the new individual total would be 33,600 yen. The difference of 1,100 yen between the individual price and the set price means a 3.4% value. Not much, but at least it’s in the green now.

This set might be worth getting if you are head over heels in love with the blue shimmers + shooting stars (?) on the handle, and don’t own any of the equivalent brushes.

Notes on Azur Set:

I’ve no idea what brown squirrel in that large eye brush is. I’ve never seen it in Chikuhodo’s offerings until now. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know! It might be Kazan squirrel which is really expensive and thus, pushed the price up.

Looks like they really dug deep into their more obscure brushes this year. Last year’s price comparison (here) was a breeze because i had suspects that i could name off the top of my head. Last year’s large set was 34,600 yen (2,100 yen difference or 6% more) but had 7 brushes, four of which (2 face, 2 eyes) were pure squirrel as opposed to the 1 lone, pure grey squirrel brush this year.

I was disappointed to see that the lip brush this year is non-retractable. At least give it a cap to make it portable, please! Being able to protect the brush head makes a lip brush far more useful (for me anyways) as i can load up the brush in the morning with my lip color choice of the day, toss it in my bag willy-nilly, then pull it out and uncap for touch ups throughout the day… rather than bringing the whole tube of lipstick with me, risking the cap falling off and letting debris get in, or worse, having it get stolen, or lost. They do offer an Artist Series 4-2 Lip Brush with a cap (for 1,800 yen), which i would have preferred.

According to a commenter (thanks a bunch by the way) “Chikuhodo lists the shape of the Azur blush brush as 丸, which they also use to describe the shape of other completely round ferrules like the ones found on the R-C2.” So it is fairly safe to say that the GSN-4 is a proper match.

[Beautylish price analysis coming soon]

Now for the other one:

The Violet Set

The Violet Set (15,500 yen) is the second, smaller set that CDJapan is also taking pre-orders for and has a shimmery violet theme with the same chain-of-stars accents. There are 400 sets available. It contains three brushes that form a pretty well rounded set for face, cheeks and eye.

Closest match i can find is the Takumi T-5 (5,000) yen and even this one is really off. 8 mm off to be exact. The Violet highlight brush starts tapering much earlier (lower down on the ferrule end) and ends in a finer point)

Eye shadow Brush: Gray Squirrel

Hair length approx. 12 mm

It’s either a clone of the M-5 (2,600) or G-4 (2,400 yen) both of which are pure grey sq. and 12 mm long. The M-5 is dc’d but the G-4 is here to stay. I mentioned the M-5 because it was the other grey sq. brush by Chikuhodo with 12 mm bristles

There is no brush case with this set

I’ll be doing several combination comparisons because i have no effing clue which powder brush is the closest. To make my life easier I’m taking the average of the eye brushes and using 2,500 yen for my calculations. I’m assigning a value of 3,900 yen to the highlight brush. See note #3 for how i came up with this number. I came up with a value for a hypothetical mixed bristle Artist 20-2 brush. See note #4 to see how I arrived at the value I used in my calculation. **Edit Oct 28, 2016: I did not think the original version of my first chart through enough. The chart has since been updated to reflect adjust prices for the G-8, MK-3 and GSN-1 (to approximate their values as if they were 45 mm long rather than 55 mm long as the original chart was based off of). I will not be showing calculations for these since they were simple proportions like in note #3.

The reason why i did these adjustments is because the length differences between the violet brushes and the permanent ones are quite significant and hair length is correlated with price. I consider anything more than 3 mm in difference to be significant as it is readily visible. I was not able to properly adjust for the cost of having saikoho mixed in rather than sokoho, which would increase the value of the brush some, so takes these calculations with a grain of salt.

Mx 20-2

G-8

MK-3

GSN-1

Powder brush

6470

7400

9400

9800

Highlight brush

5000

“

“

“

Eye brush

2500

“

“

“

Individual Total

13970

14900

16900

17300

Violet Set Total

15500

“

“

“

Difference

-1530

-600

1400

1800

Percent Savings

-9.87097

-3.87097

9.032258

11.6129

**Edit Oct 30, 2016: We owe many thanks to the reader who gave me this critical information:

I’ve tried to calculate the width of the powder brushes using Chikuhodo’s website description that I printed. For the purple powder: the hair is 45 mm long, this equals 30 mm on the printed paper. On the printed paper, the hair at the base of the ferrule has a width of 17 mm on my ruler, making it 25,5 mm on the real brush. For the Azur powder, my calculations give a 27.5 mm width at the base of the ferule on the real brush. But I don’t have the thickness.

This would mean that the closest brush (without knowing the thickness), at 26 mm wide is the MK-3 powder brush. You would hypothetically be saving 9% by getting the set, but it is really hard to give a value to an all-new brushes.

This set is intriguing due to the never-seen-before brushes (and that gorgeous purple color), but i woudn’t cry over missing out if my credit-card fu ends up being rusty and too slow to snag a set.

Violet Notes

These brushes seem to be novel Chikuhodo offerings. They usually do gray sq + sokoho combos. There are no brushes with grey sq + saikoho in their current line up. They don’t have a goat (saikoho or sokoho) highlight brush as short as the one in the azure set either.

I really wish they have given width measurements so that i could narrow down and select the closest powder brush in their regular brushes available all year round. If anyone gets this set, please let me know the width of the ferrule on the face brush!

Now that the brushes are “equals”, we can see that using mixed hairs translates to a 32% decrease in value compared to pure sq.

here’s a visual

MK1

MK3

MK1 (55)

MK3

52

55

55

55

16000

11500

16923.08

–

11500

=

5425

MK1 (55)

5425

/

16900

=

0.321006

BL/RE-20-2

32%

of

9500

=

3040

Mixed 20-2

9500

–

3030

=

6470

[Beautylish Price Analysis Coming Soon]

Maybe they got pissed at me price snooping last year and decided to make my life hard this year. (Ha! As if they even know who i am, or read my price analysis). The more logical explanation is that they are testing the market strength of the Chikuhodo name and trying to gauge general consumer interest toward their brand and less popular brushes.